Our MRIO data

Improvements in methodology

Maritime shipping emissions: Our models showed shipping emissions for some countries quite a bit higher than those self-reported by the industry. Since v1 of the SWC MRIO, the OECD has also published a maritime model with higher emission levels, supporting our findings. Many countries do not adequately account for ships that sail under another country's flag, even when the ship is owned by them. This often leads to under reporting for shipping emissions. Our new model has improved, and realistic shipping emissions backed by the OECD’s estimates.

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Oil and gas leaks emissions: Finding data on fugitive emissions, specifically leaks and discharges in the fossil fuel industry, is understandably difficult. Even when totals are known, it is still difficult to assign these to the appropriate industries as emissions can occur anywhere during extraction, processing, and transport. We've employed higher quality data from the UK and used this to inform improved estimates of fugitive emissions in other countries.

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Fluorinated gases: These gases are only used in a few specific industries and account for a small amount of emissions but compared to CO2 they have a very high GWP (global warming potential). Here we have again made use of high-quality data from the UK in order to inform a more refined mapping of these gases to the appropriate industries, thus improving our emissions factors.

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Radiative forcing factor for aviation: The UK's DESNZ (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) has reduced the recommended radiative forcing factor for the non-CO2 effects of high altitude flying since our first model, so we've updated our aviation emission factors accordingly.

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